1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to handling materials in vehicle beds and, more particularly, to an apparatus which operates to unload a wide variety of materials from the cargo areas of vehicles, such as pickup trucks.
2) Description of the Prior Art
Landscape gardeners, construction workers, horse breeders, park keepers and most individuals, at some time in their lives, need to move bulk materials in quantities that are too large to carry but too small to be moved economically in a dump truck. The common way of moving such a quantity is to load it onto a pickup truck 10. As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, the pickup truck 10 includes a cab 11, flat bed 12 and a tailgate 14. A C-shaped bumper 15 is positioned below the tailgate 14. The tailgate 14 is attached to the flat bed 12 via foldable tailgate supports 16 passing through respective sides 18 and 20 of the pickup truck 10 which are spaced a distance apart. The supports 16 permit the tailgate 14 to move between open and closed positions. When the tailgate 14 is in a closed position, the pickup truck bed 12 can hold material between the tailgate 14, sides 18 and 20, a front end 21 and a back end 22.
Among the types of materials that are commonly carried in the cargo area of the pickup truck are granular materials, such as sand, gravel, dirt and grain; building materials, such as lumber, dry wall panels, siding panels, bricks, stone and roofing materials; containers, such as boxes, drums and cartons; waste materials, such as brush, tree clippings, scrap, tires and demolition debris; machinery, such as air compressors and other relatively heavy pieces of equipment; and miscellaneous objects, such as firewood, animal feed, hay bales, tools and other items. In many cases, unloading of the truck bed is a difficult and time-consuming activity. For example, unloading of hay or firewood by hand or unloading of sand, gravel, earth, mulch or manure with a shovel can take a considerable amount of time and requires substantial physical labor. Heavier objects are also difficult to unload, particularly those that are carried in the back end 22 of the cargo area near the cab 11 and must be moved near the tailgate 14 before they can be unloaded.
To unload in such a manner is labor intensive, time-consuming and in some cases dangerous because of the need to climb up on the load. It would be beneficial if the load could be unloaded quickly and completely and require a fraction of the time and effort now used, without the need to climb up on the truck.
One such method is to tilt the bed of the vehicle and dump the load. This requires a special structural design which provides a pivot point or hinge for the tilting bed and a lifting mechanism such as an electric or hydraulic hoist. Such designs result in costs which are disproportionally high when compared with the cost of the standard pickup truck bed itself and too high for all but those users whose use of the mechanism is frequent enough to justify its expense.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,978,996 to Oltrogge and U.S. Pat. No. 4,629,390 to Burke disclose devices that facilitate the unloading of pickup truck beds. However, the devices discussed in these patents have complicated designs and would be relatively expensive to manufacture because of the number of components required.
Accordingly, it is an object of my invention to provide an unloading device for a pickup truck which is inexpensive and easy to install and permits the vehicle to be quickly and completely unloaded with minimum labor.